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Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation infiltrates New York

Nonprofit leases co-working space to businesses, charities and freelancers working toward some kind of social mission.

The Centre for Social Innovation has expanded beyond Toronto, opening a new location in New York. It's one of the few co-working spaces in the city to rent just to those with a social mission. (Handout)

By Jodie ShupacSpecial to the Star

Sun., Aug. 25, 2013

NEW YORK—It’s Wednesday morning, and on the third floor of the eighth largest building in New York City, a group of people gather around an expansive kitchen island; amid a flurry of communal vegetable chopping, a woman frets that there are not enough avocados. Another unveils a bowl of sumptuous greens and assures the group they’re organic, sourced straight from the community garden down the road.

Though mostly American, all are members of the newest outpost of Toronto’s Centre for Social Innovation, or CSI, the burgeoning non-profit organization whose modus operandi is to lease co-working space to individual businesses, charities and freelancers working toward some kind of social mission.

Networking opportunities like the weekly “salad club” — one of many customs borrowed from CSI Toronto — are part and parcel of membership.

Once everyone’s seated at the communal table, CSI’s community animator, Allie Mahler, encourages members to share something they’ve learned that week. People chime in with earnest accounts of impromptu music lessons and the importance of surrounding oneself with those less fearful when taking risks.

Since opening its flagship location at Spadina Ave. and Queen St. nine years ago, CSI has expanded to include two additional Toronto sites — one in the Annex and the other in Regent Park. On May 1, CSI launched its first cross-border venture, taking on a 10-year lease in the Starrett-Lehigh building, a high-profile commercial space in Manhattan’s tony West Chelsea neighbourhood.

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A former freight terminal and warehouse built in the 1930s, the Starrett-Lehigh encompasses an entire city block, houses 160 companies and is bounded by trendy private galleries. Its tenants include Hugo Boss and Martha Stewart.

Tonya Surman, CSI’s founding chief executive officer, and Eli Malinsky, executive director of the new branch, were intrigued when RXR Realty, the multibillion-dollar developer that owns the Starrett-Lehigh, expressed interest in partnering with them to establish a CSI New York.

But CSI was wary of becoming a kind of franchise, or of being identified strictly as a co-working space.

“That’s not our goal,” emphasizes Malinsky. “The goal is to create social impact and catalyze it.

“The space is just the precondition for what we’re trying to accomplish. It brings a critical mass of diverse people together and then, suddenly, you have this little playground, this sandbox, on which to try different things. . .”

As well, members pay for space, which “creates a revenue model, so we can afford to be able to try different interventions.”

Social innovators

“Interventions,” or innovation, though not strictly defined, means disrupting what they view as society’s broken systems through the introduction of radically positive solutions — not, as the more entrenched social justice model might see it, through protest.

Superficially, a workspace for “social innovators” means people chat prison reform in the washrooms, bemoan the city’s failure to compost and regularly convene in the meeting areas for workshops, rapidly exchanging buzzwords and business cards.

On a deeper level, both Malinsky and Surman explain CSI’s philosophy with academic care and near-ideological intensity, certain of their vision to change the world by creating platforms on which to do so. They ultimately concluded that the New York foray could further this cause, and signed an agreement with RXR last July.

“What it comes down to is, if you want to change the world, what better place than to go to the biggest platform in the world, with the biggest megaphone, and show them what social innovation can look like?” Surman says.

The 70 members that have joined the New York wing to date cut across sectors, and include socially minded tech startups, social ventures, non-profit and charities, with names like Ignite Good, Be Social Change and the Opportunity Lab, as well as freelance accountants, communications advisers and consultants serving mainly clients with social purposes. Holding their events, client meetings and fundraisers at the CSI site helps the latter garner community buzz.

“We see ourselves as a nexus,” says Malinsky. “Our goal is to be this place — physically, socially and psychologically — where anyone committed to making the world a better place can come together and actualize their intent.”

New York, despite abounding in co-working spaces and start-up labs, has offered CSI an unfilled niche. CSI is one of the few co-working spaces in the city to rent just to those with a social mission, and the only one explicitly looking to galvanize New York’s broader movement for social innovation.

Furthermore, CSI’s enthusiasm about social enterprises (essentially, ventures that use a for-profit model but have a clear social purpose) uniquely positions them as a sort of bridge between the old-guard charitable sector and this newer cohort of sector-bending, self-identified innovators.

“The talent in New York is just remarkable, but the lack of cohesion in the social innovation space was really apparent,” Surman explains.

Toronto has, arguably, been something of a North American trailblazer for social innovation. Malinsky also credits homegrown initiatives like the Toronto Social Enterprise Fund and MARS, organizations that nurture social enterprises and innovation.

“I think the co-founders of (the original) CSI . . . were very prescient in their vision of what this thing could be, in naming it . . . and in this notion that social enterprises even exist,” says Malinsky. “We’ve created this nucleus in Toronto and we don’t talk about it enough.”

Broader markets

In addition to connecting innovators across the city, Surman says, “we want to provide more opportunities for Canadian and Toronto-based social enterprises to access New York and U.S. markets.”

Some of this has already begun. The Working Group, a Toronto-based software development company with clients in the business, non-profit and public sectors, heard about the CSI expansion and decided to open its first New York office in the new space.

“We’ve had customers in the U.S., including a number in the New York City area, for a number of years now,” explains Chris Eben, a partner at TWG. “We were already thinking about expansion opportunities in New York . . . the CSI had an unbelievable space and community . . . we thought, ‘What better way to enter New York? What better place to bring our clients to?’”

For RXR’s executives, the hope is that CSI’s presence will help draw more tenants to the Starrett-Lehigh and create connections among the building’s existing leaseholders. Though CSI pays market rent, they crafted an economic arrangement that is, at the beginning of their term, what RXR’s executive vice-president and managing director Bill Elder calls, “a little more forgiving.”

RXR assigned its construction personnel to renovate the space, and CSI’s New York director of design, Matthew Cohen, a Toronto export known for his work on the Evergreen Brickworks, added touches to reinforce CSI’s vision of sustainability and inclusiveness.

“The quid pro quo of the deal was that CSI had to put on various symposiums and gatherings that would be open to our (other) tenants, to educate and engage them,” Elder says. “

Though the Toronto sites have no shortage of esthetic appeal, CSI’s New York digs are positively swanky. The roughly 2,230-square-metre space is newly renovated, with high ceilings and plenty of natural light. Its rooms are replete with reclaimed, locally sourced touches, such as the old freight elevator doors that were restored as a dining table and the refurbished kitchen cabinetry sourced from a 1920s apothecary. In addition to the communal kitchen and classroom-sized workshop spaces, there are several sprawling banks of communal “hot desks,” ringed by 32 glass-paned offices.

In just under two months, 31 out of 32 offices were rented, in addition to 18 private desks, three desk clusters and 33 hot desks.

But Malinsky remains cautious.

“Our story’s still unfolding. Despite our successes to date, things remain uncertain — and that’s exciting — but I’m trying not to anticipate too heavily, or to create very specific designs, and just kind of see what emerges and what we can pull off.”

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